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Making Instructional Changes


It's not enough to simply examine and analyze data. Educators also must make instructional changes based on the data to enhance student success.

Big Ideas
  • Instructional changes work best when they come from the PLCs, not from above. If PLCs have robust feedback loops in place (e.g., from frequent formative assessments), they are in the best position to analyze and act upon student learning outcomes data because they are closest to the students. Top-down solutions rarely work for all students/teachers/classrooms; giving responsibility and power to data-driven PLCs can have significant and positive impacts on student achievement.
  • Individual teachers and administrators often don't know what best instructional practices are and/or how to best implement them in their school organizations. The theory behind PLCs is basically that of united we stand; divided we fall. In other words, the collective wisdom and expertise within each PLC ensures a wide variety of ideas and solutions. Additionally, the disparate viewpoints and perspectives within the PLC should act as a check against low-quality instructional interventions.
  • There are two different kinds of information (1) outcome and (2) process. Outcomes refer to student achievement such as test scores. Process information refers to the things we do: program delivery, materials, equipment, roles, responsibilities, skill levels and attitudes of the staff responsible for instruction.
  • "Process" has quality attached to it
  • A major cultural change is required if educators are to make the continuous-improvement perspective and the processes of data-driven decision making part of the way in which they function. Such a change will not occur without leadership, effort, and well-designed supports.
  • No amount of data alone will change instructional practices - collaboration of teachers and administrators working with data to develop a plan to improve instruction will lead to effectice changes in instructional practices. It is time to more out of the isolation model of education to a team-approach to teaching. Technology is making data more accessible and meaningful; however, until teachers and administrators change their approach to identifying and improving shortcomings in learning no amount of data will make a difference.
  • Make data useful to school administrators, teachers, and parents in order to establish accountability and work together to create change.
  • "...the use of data in schools is encouraged not through extensive formal professional development but rather through ongoing support from colleagues and instructional or data coacheswho help teachers examine data for their students and develop instructional plans to meet student needs."
  • Measures of student engagement, information from other assessments, previous interventions, and other data are needed for teachers to design appropriate instructional interventions. Likewise, using a single formative assessment to measure students’ mathematics progress is not as reliable as using several different assessments to determine students’ mathematical understanding. Teachers who are data-driven

  • Set clear expectations around the use of student data as the basis for decisions.
    •Integrate collaborative exploration of data into existing structures for joint teacher
    planning and reflection on teaching.
    •Provide a safe environment for teacher examination of their students’ performance.
    •Support teachers in making the link between data and alternate instructional strategies.
  • We must find ways to connect their data systems, professional development, and supports to address instructional needs
  • We need to think systemically about how to blend data within the culture of district and school practice--- data collection and usage will become second nature.
  • To achieve instructional change the leaders role becomes support and shared decision making. Support involves the understanding of the what and why of the change being made.


-- Principals can:
  1. encourage data use by setting an example through their own activities, designating all or part of teacher planning or professional development time as occasions for examining and reflecting on data, and communicating expectations around data use.
  2. use data as an important tool in the principal’s assumption of the role of instructional leader.
  3. lead whole-school or grade-level meetings dedicated to the analysis of data.
  4. maintain schoolwide lists of students who were in danger of failing to attain state proficiency standards in order to keep on top of efforts being made to support these students during the year.
  5. meet with teachers individually on a regular basis to discuss their students’ needs and the teacher’s plan for the class.
  6. gather data and provide "user friendly" documents that are easily interpreted and less frustrating

-- Stages of Developing a Data-using Culture:
  1. Early uses of data are often for the purposes of school improvement planning and for assigning students to special
    services or to classes at different levels. This activity typically is conducted by school, grade- level or department teams.
  2. In the next stage, a school’s teachers start using data for making decisions about what happens within their individual classrooms. At this stage, teachers look at data for the students in their classroom and do item analysis in order to make decisions about what to stress in their curriculum, how to group students with similar instructional needs, and whether or not to reteach certain material.
  3. The third stage of data use development occurs when teachers reach the point where they begin looking at data and consulting others to help them make decisions not just about their students’ skill levels and what they should teach but about the way that they teach. In this stage teachers begin comparing the gains that their students have made in specific areas to the gains made by students in other teachers’ classes and start sharing the practices that have produced the best student gains. Using data has become second nature to staff at schools that have attained this third stage and created a culture of data use.

Practical Tips
  • Understand that there is a direct relationship between the quality of our process and the quality of students' results that we receive. The better the process, the better results we see. We can directly control the process, but we cannot directly control the results achieved.
  • Continuously improve the quality of the processes, which will then improve the quality of our results.
  • Understand that the goal of data-driven organizations is NOT to improve test scores.
  • Support families in understanding student data by creating concrete, practical, accessible ways for parents to become involved in their students' education
  • Having a set of common assessments that everyone teaching the same content gives to their students at about the same time encourages teachers to sit down and share both their data and their teaching strategies.
  • Given that time is one of the most basic resources in any organization, there need to be strong expectations that administrators will provide time to teachers, and educators will take the time to examine data and use it to guide improvements in their programs and practices.
  • Formative assessment can be thought of as instructional DDDM that leads to organizational learning, which can be defined as the "detection and correction of error" (Argyris & Schon, 1978, p. 2).
  • Inclusion of diverse populations. All students involved.



Resources
This article explains an example of teachers who implemented a Response to Intervention (RTI) model for the purposes of using performance data to drive instructional decisions. We do something similar at the high school, but call it Instructional Decision Making (IDM). I plan to share this article with our building principal as it offers examples that may be useful for us as we move forward with the process. The main points include student interventions (with an example tracking form); tiered, researched-based instruction and teacher made video clips (a database of videos that model best practices).
http://journals.cec.sped.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1770&context=tecplus


High School Critical Resources.docx


Middle School Critical resources.docx